


Dies, Died, Will Die

by restlesslikeme



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:28:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are galaxies to rebuild, constellations to spin, lives and stories and civilizations to construct from the broken bones of Existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dies, Died, Will Die

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the trailer for Thor 2: The Dark World and I started spiraling. It started with tag meta about these two loving each other and slaughtering each other endlessly across the stars and it turned into this.

 

 

“You should know that when you betray me, I will kill you.”  


The construct of that sentence is everything. It's intentional. Loki can feel it.  


 _When_ , not _if_ , so maybe after all these years, Thor has learned. Loki’s been spinning ideas since they locked him up, and they crawl along the edges of his skull now, insect legs clicking away across his brain while he watches his brother. He’s been waiting and plotting because this is what he is, what he does, even when he feels the madness eating away at him, he will twist all of it up and he will turn on his brother.  


And Thor will always give him the chance.  


_When you betray me_  


Loki smiles from behind enchanted glass, he smiles and he’s glad, glad that Thor has come back to him, glad that they can continue with the game, with the cycle, with what it means to be them. Thor’s hair is longer than before, but he is cleaner than Loki remembers; he is every bit the rightful prince that is his title by birthright, and it burns namelessly through Loki as it always has; beyond love or loathing or pride, beyond anything.  


 _I will kill you._  
  
  
The when excites him. On the other side of his cage, Thor stands as solemn and resigned as ever, playing his part perfectly the way he always has, does, will. Burdened with a terrible love, a terrible loyalty. A terrible morality that has always escaped Loki, and this is why one of them will always always die.  


“When do we start?”

 

 

\--

 

 

Loki’s blade fits between Thor’s ribs as though it were made to be sheathed there, and blood splashes across the stars.  


Above them the sky opens up with a flash as Thor drops to his knees in front of his brother.  


“Again, Thor?”  


There’s something like tenderness in the way Loki rests his hand against the side of his face, mud-streaked and bruised. He thinks he should be bored by the hurt in Thor’s eyes by now, by the sense of loss and betrayal he finds, (found, will find) there, but it always resonates just as strongly, somehow. It always fills him up, and he drinks it in. The sky cracks, and Asgard’s crown prince collapses into the dirt of a dying planet. There’s no one to mourn him this time, just Loki who stands above him, his hair and his cape whipping around him as he watches him die.  


Thor chokes on blood that is almost black, it dribbles over his lips and down his chin through his beard. Still, Loki watches.  


“Do you love me as much today as you always have, Thor?” He is sneering. Victory tastes sweet on his lips, Thor’s death is a point on his side of the board and oh, he will never stop feeling this way.  


Thor smiles, lips ruby red, eyes tired and never at peace, and answers:  


“Yes.”

 

\--

 

There aren’t any first times, anymore. Thor cannot remember the first time he kissed his brother, he can’t remember meeting him as a child, he can’t remember what it felt like to clean Loki’s blood and gore from Mjolnir the first time. He cannot remember for how long he mourned.  


Beginnings don’t exist.  


Neither do endings, though.

  
Right now there’s only Loki underneath him, Loki’s hands in his hair, Loki all around him. Loki’s hips are slender and pale underneath Thor’s grip and with every push forward, Loki bucks back, rolls himself forward, takes Thor’s cock deeper. He’s gorgeous like this; he spreads himself out and looks like he’s made of marble, his head thrown back, all curves and glorious jutting edges. Gods don’t bruise easily, but they always try. Thor digs his fingernails, sinks his teeth into flesh like he means it (he does, he does), shoves and sucks and presses down against Loki’s throat until he snarls.

  
“I do not belong to you.”

  
Loki is vicious here as he is in all things and it’s Thor who ends up with a purple-red chain around his neck, Thor who ends up on his back when Loki turns them over. Loki’s hair is pitch black and wild around his ghost of a face, and Thor wants to hold onto it, wants to grip it between his fingers, but Loki holds his wrist down above his head, slides down hard on his cock and gasps  
“ _Brother_.”

  
And Thor can no longer feel anything but this, his climax crashing and singing through every atom in his body, pale hands strong around his throat, and Loki, Loki filling his head like a vision.

 

 

\--

 

 

He tries to explain it to Steve, once, what it means to be. The difference between Gods and men.  


“You’d kill your own brother, if it was the right thing to do” he says, and he’s frowning but his eyes are sad. They are the eyes of someone who knows sacrifice, but they are still the eyes of a man, and Thor realizes then that none of his allies here could ever understand forever, could never understand the difference between death and the end of all, regardless of how smart or noble or good they may be.  


“Bruce killed his own dad,” Tony announces suddenly from the other side of the room, the watery grin on his mouth spelling intoxication. “Did you know? Split his goddamn head open.” He makes a crude cracking motion with his hands. Steve looks simultaneously stern and ill. Thor stares at the floor in silence.  


“You ever do that, Point Break?” Tony’s laughing, holding onto the crown of his own head as if he can feel the fracture, to check to see if he’s leaking through his hair, and when he moves to stand, he stumbles. “How’s that for a fuckin’ Greek tragedy?”  


Thor doesn’t answer. It is easy to forget that this is how they think of his family, sometimes. It is harder to remember how viciously these people take life when life is all that they have.  


When Steve stands stiffly up and leaves the room, Tony is still laughing wetly.  


“How many times’ve you murdered him?” says Tony.  


“How many times’ve you fucked him?” says Tony.  


Thor stands, avoiding Tony’s shrewd look, avoiding the rictus pulling at Tony’s lips.  


Gods and men.

 

\--

 

There is silver woven in with the gold of Thor’s hair now, and Loki wants to twist it between his fingers, wants to plait it the way he knows he has done (in a golden orchard in an Asgard of past, in a bed of silk folded into his brother’s lap, preparing Thor’s body for a warrior’s burial) but his hands are bound and Thor looks at him from his throne as though he’s momentarily forgotten who he is.  


“Laufeyson,” Thor says, moving to grip Mjolnir, sighing.  


“Odinson,” Loki replies, mimicking his tone through cracked lips. His cheeks are sunken. He feels old, this time. His knees pop and ache when he drops down in front of Thor.  


Thor sighs again, and pulls himself to his feet, his great hammer in one hand.  


“You have been found guilty of high treason,” says Thor. He uses the voice reserved for royal functions and decrees, a king aware of his own power, and Loki closes his eyes to listen to it. “You have conspired against the Crown and People, and Asgard has called for your execution. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”  


Loki smiles, eyes still closed, at bliss with the certainty of what is about to happen. At bliss with the sound of his brother’s voice.  


“No, my King,” and there is nothing mocking in his voice.  


Thor lifts Loki’s head gently, the pads of his fingers rough and callused under Loki’s chin. He caresses the corner of his mouth. Loki wonders if he would do the same were his courtiers here to bear witness. He finds that he doesn’t care either way.  


“We have grown old together, this time,” Thor muses softly. “Or we have done as close a version as we are able, being you and me.”  


Loki laughs.

  
“Am I here to be executed or to reminisce?” He bows his neck again, readying himself.  


When Mjolnir comes down on the back of his head, it feels like a crack of thunder. Loki is dead before his face hits the the floor, his skull caved in.  


Thor seats himself once again, gnarled hands closing over the arms of his gilded throne while his brother’s blood begins to pool at his feet.

 

\--

 

Loki freezes Jane Foster’s still beating heart in her chest then disappears, and Thor tears apart the fabric of an entire solar system in his quest for vengeance.  


When he returns to earth, bruised and exhausted, his soul feels heavy.  


The Avengers are dead, the tower a crumbling wreck, a monument to an age past.  


“Did you think I would stop with her, Brother?” Loki’s hair whips around his face. He is wearing luxurious earth clothes- a suit and tie, leather shoes that shine in the dirt. He grips his scepter in one hand. “Did you think I would leave you a home to come back to? A band of pitiful humans to call a family?” he hisses.  


“Did you think for a second that I would leave anything in my wake? That I would be _merciful_?”  


There’s a chasm opening in Thor’s chest. A sense of overwhelming hopelessness and panic that he can’t escape. Mjolnir sits untouched on his hip.  


“I ruined an entire planet, ended billions of human lives in a matter of days,” Loki says. He spreads his arms, displaying the wasteland that surrounds them. “And I did all of it for you.”  


Loki doesn’t kiss so much as he bites; he presses his mouth against Thor’s brusingly, makes him bleed in his fervor. Thor’s hands remain limp at his sides.  


“This is your legacy,” Loki whispers into his mouth. “This is what you have led them to.”  


Thor fucks him on the cracked pavement of what used to be New York city, in the rubble of what was once a place that he loved. This is all they ever were, ever are, ever will be. This is all that will ever come of his blind love for things he wasn’t meant to have.

 

\--

 

When he rules, Thor’s crown is tall and made of gold. Loki’s is silver and iron, delicately twisted but barbed and jeweled. It sits on his head like a halo of thorns.  


Thor pledges his allegiance in a heather field, flowers stained scarlet with the blood of their combined armies. Loki likes him best this way, he knows; on his knees eyes cast upwards. There’s no question of who belongs to who, and what surprises him (will surprise him, has surprised him) is how easily it fits, how willing he is to slip into this version of himself where Loki is all consuming, where he is allowed to let his love translate to servitude.  


“I do love you, Thor,” Loki murmurs, and Thor knows he is being manipulated, knows of Loki’s silver tongue better than anyone.  


But he is still willing to turn galaxies upside down if Loki should ask.  


“My very own lionheart.” His tone is sneering, but Thor still feels a shudder run down his spine, still hears the groan that rumbles in the back of his throat unbidden.  


It is (was, will be) years this time before Thor murders him in the night.

 

\--

 

“If you had to choose between him and me,” Janes whispers, her voice soft against his collarbone where she’s curled up against his chest. “It would be me, right?”  


Thor gathers her in close to him, strokes fingers through her long hair, and every part of him aches.  


“Yes,” he replies softly. “Every time, yes.”  


He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that there is no choice. There never is, has been, will be. They will always both die but only Loki will remain, at the end of things. Everything dies, but people. People don’t come back.  


Gods and men.

 

\--

 

“We are the same!” Thor shouts. Above him, Loki stands stock still, a marble carving in the midst of a war. “We are brothers, you and I. End this now, Loki. Let us return to Asgard side by side.”  


Loki’s laugh is more like a shriek than anything else, the scream of some winged beast, and Thor forces himself to ignore it as he pushes through the din, trying to reach his brother on the platform above him.  


“You still believe we are one?” Loki calls back. The bottom of his cape is torn and stained and his eyes are lit with battle. “You still believe I need to be _saved?_ You cannot pull me from chaos, _brother_ , because chaos lives in me. This is what I _am_.”  


Someone screams and Loki laughs again, and Thor’s head feels as though it’s going to split open, feels like the symmetry of those two sounds will never leave him. Loki’s words are heavy on his shoulders, heavy on his heart, because he knows his brother is only half right. He knows (should have always known) that violence is etched on Loki’s bones the way righteousness is etched onto his own, knows that this will never stop, that Loki is (was, always will be) fallen from whatever grace he may have possessed at the beginning of this narrative, that he himself will always fail to bring him home. But they are one. And Thor cannot tear himself from Loki any more than he can tear out his own heart.  


He starts swinging as soon as he’s in range, a roar of battle on his lips, Loki’s laughter in his ears. Mjolnir cracks against Loki’s ribs at the same moment Loki slashes at him with his scepter, knocking the wind out of him, and they collapse together all at once.  


“You cannot destroy me, Brother,” Thor whispers, his voice raspy, and Loki rolls ontop of him, his mouth dripping red, holding Thor down with some kind of magic to keep him from moving away.  


“No,” Loki agrees easily. He has a dagger in hand, slipped from some secret brace on his wrist. He kisses Thor at the same moment as he slits his throat, and Thor cannot tell whose blood he has in his mouth before everything blacks out.

 

\--

 

They stand at the end of time together, side by side at last, both having forgotten how to weep.  


“This is your legacy,” Loki says, and it sounds familiar but it is not unkind.  


There are galaxies to rebuild, constellations to spin, lives and stories and civilizations to construct from the broken bones of Existence.  


“Everything can be torn down,” says Loki.  


“Everything can be remade,” says Loki.  


Thor stands at the beginning and end of All, and he holds his brother’s hand.  


“And eventually,” Loki tells him, looking out on their work. “I will betray you, and you will kill me.”  


Thor smiles.  


“When do we start?”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Bioshock Infinite and it was really a toss up between that and "Til you and I die and die and die again" but the latter felt kind of like beating a dead horse.


End file.
